Champions League Football Coming to a New Streaming Service From Turner

Turner Broadcasting System plans to launch a standalone sports streaming service for consumers in 2018, the Time Warner unit said on Thursday.

The service will offer access to UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League matches as part of a three-year multi-platform rights agreement with the governing body of European football beginning with the 2018-19 season. Turner will add other content to the service as it becomes available, executives said. Pricing has yet to be determined.

The announcement marks the latest in a wave of streaming services that media companies have launched to accommodate the growing number of younger viewers who are canceling cable subscriptions in favor of watching content online, a practice known as cord-cutting.

Turner's sports service would mark its third online streaming product in the last 15 months. It also offers FilmStruck, a streaming service for film buffs, and one for cartoon fans called Boomerang.

In an interview, Turner President David Levy said that in addition to premium content, the sports service could also potentially include niche sports that do not currently have a way to reach avid fans.

Turner also said as part of its agreement with UEFA that live matches would be regularly televised across TBS, TNT, and truTV and that additional content would be available on its sports site Bleacher Report.